Intel talks 10nm in 2015

Intel held a nice technical session for journalists and analysts and we got a chance to hear the presentation by a senior Intel fellow, a chap called Mark Bohr who talked about the 14nm manufacturing process and beyond.

It turns out that Intel hopes to have its 14nm manufacturing ready in late 2013 to meet the schedule for the next generation that we know as the Broadwell in 2014 mass production. The process is called P1272, described as 16nm, and Intel has taken some steps to make it denser than expected. Intel has adopted tighter pitches than it was expected four years ago when the process was announced and a part of the story is that Intel has changed to a low-power oriented roadmap more than simple brute force high performance like in past years.

The future of manufacturing for Intel includes research in fields like 10nm that is expected in 2015 or beyond. At the same time Intel also works on 7nm and even 5nm but Bohr did not get into specifics when can we expect these next steps.

If Intel keeps the manufacturing changes every other year, this would get us with 10nm in 2015, 7nm in 2017 and 5nm in 2019 but these are no guarantees that Intel can keep up with such a schedule.